Consider this your Monday Opener.
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[…] Yeah, this story is a silly trifle, but that’s ok. We live to serve. Treat this as another open thread. […]
by John Cole| 27 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Consider this your Monday Opener.
Comments are closed.
[…] Yeah, this story is a silly trifle, but that’s ok. We live to serve. Treat this as another open thread. […]
The Other Steve
Free Newt!
The Other Steve
This is the 50th anniversary of sputnik.
Zifnab
http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m306/BearMeat1845/reynold-suck.jpg
The Other Steve
I’m starting up a new protest movement for right-wingers.
Free the Ely Six!
The Other Steve
How come the Mainstream Media doesn’t ever talk about how obnoxious environmentalists are? How they abused and tortured the Ely six, forcing them to behave in an anti-social manner?
The real victims here are the Ely Six, and nature. Environmentalists are anti-environment by their very nature!
The Other Steve
OOPS! I SHOULD HAVE UsED more UPPER CASE!
Punchy
Riddle me this:
$oil/barrel — $65, gallon gas $3.20+ (May)
$oil/barrel — $82, gallon gas $2.55 (today)
WTF?
Evinfuilt
Refineries finally caught up with capacity due to the stable Gulf this summer.
Our high prices had nothing to do with cost or supply. We just couldn’t turn it into gas and truck it all around the country.
It only took them what 2 or 3 years since they said they were behind for them to catch up.
Xenos
Refiner capacity is the key, not the cost of crude.
Whether that refinement capacity problem is due to overzealous environmentalists, or due to oil companies not wanting to make the investment to build new refineries since they see peak oil coming, is an interesting question. I have little insight on the subject, and I doubt anyone else here does, either.
Punchy
Capacity schmacity. I understand this has a role, but I find it impossible to believe that when your main raw material cost goes up 26%, that your product can go down 20%. I fail to understand how this isn’t manipulated.
whippoorwill
Sounds like Rummispeak to me, and it’s way too early on a Monday morning for that. Anywho, I wonder how the hippies up in Taos are treating the former commandant. I bet they got him feeding on Tofu and birdseed burgers while relaxing to Hearts of Space. A strange brew indeed.
Zifnab
I can tell you right now, with a father in the oil business and having applied for a number of positions at oil companies in college, it’s the latter far more than the former.
One of the companies I applied to was running around and buying up old refineries just because it was so much cheaper than building new ones. The main reason is that refineries only begin turning a profit after 10-15 years. In 10-15 years, we probably won’t be turning crude oil into gasoline as our primary source of energy.
Environmentalists have a hand in it too, but only because they won’t let oil companies build on the cheap. If you’ve got to build a refinery that isn’t going to explode or fall apart in 10 years anyway, its harder to make said refinery profitable. But environmental concerns are just one factor in a rather large equation.
John Cole
It is from a movie.
John S.
Aside from the standard explanation regarding refinery capacity and supply-side economics, the obvious answer is that the price is rigged more than a Diebold voting machine.
The Other Steve
Not a single one of you are talking about the Ely Six.
Proof positive that you’re all racists! Sure, free the Jena boys, but don’t champion the Ely Six because they are white.
Zifnab
This is what our educational institutions are doing to our brave, capable, intelligent young men! If not for liberal Universities, this never would have happened. :-p
demimondian
It’s actually about refinery output balance. There’s a tradeoff between gasoline (light petroleum fractions) and diesel fuel (heavy fractions). When capacity is low, it’s possible to shift the balance one way or the other — and, yes, manipulate the price — to meet demand. Right now, the capacity in the petro market is sufficient, and supply is stable; the result is that fuel prices are down.
whippoorwill
Was Rumsfeld in a movie?
whippoorwill
just kidding, John
Pb
The largest components in the price of a gallon of gas are: the cost of oil, taxes, and the refining costs; also in there are advertising and the station mark-up, but these are tiny. So:
A barrel of oil is 42 gallons; using your other numbers: 65/42 = ~$1.55; 3.20-1.55 = $1.65. 82/42 = ~$1.95; 2.55-1.95 = $0.60.
Adding in federal and state taxes averages to about 42 cents; let’s round it up to 50 cents for advertising and station mark-up.
Therefore, refining costs would have gone from $1.15 a gallon down to $0.10 a gallon — I’m not buying it, something is very wrong there.
The Other Steve
Free the Ely Six!
Free Newt!
Dave in ME
Ahmadinejad owns Bush’s ass:
(AP) — TEHRAN, Iran – After being welcomed in New York with protests and a scolding from the president of Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is extending an invitation to President Bush. Ahmadinejad tells Iranian state television that if Bush plans to travel to Iran, he’s welcome to make a speech at an Iranian university.
D-Chance.
The conservatives won’t wait a Friedman Unit to attack Tom on this, I’d guess…
Let the fun begin.
Phillip J. Birmingham
I would pay CASH MONEY to see drunken squirrels on a shooting spree.
The Other Steve
What’s this got to do with the victimization of the Ely six?
YellowJournalism
Only one of the best movies ever!
“She looks like a cocktail waitress on an oil rig.”
“I know a man with a van, and he’ll take you back to wherever you came from!!!”
“And to think, in some countries these dogs would be eaten.”